Molly's 1st Birthday!

Monday was Molly's FIRST Birthday!

Isn' she cute? Her day started when Walter and I got home from work, and we took her on a long walk in the park by the house. She ran, chased ducks, tried out her new harness, and had a great time! 

Next was dinner, where she had some chicken in her bowl as an extra birthday treat. I have never seen her eat so fast in my life!

THEN..... Dessert!

 She saw it and became pretty interested...

 But after I unwrapped it she HAD to have it!

 She wanted this treat so badly she JUMPED ON THE TABLE! If it wasn't her birthday, she would have been in big trouble!

After she licked half the icing off, and i broke off the very top piece of the cookie for her to eat (it was huge!) she let out the looooooongest burp!!! I guess she is becoming less modest with age? :)

Next we gave her some toys:

 Surprisingly enough, the red ring only lasted about 15 minutes. She ate off all the little red bumps so we had to throw it out. Oh well! But good thing I couldn't stop at one toy, because the next one was a winner.

Lastly, we gave her a bone that she was OBSESSED with. She woke up every hour throughout the night to re-hide it because she loved it so much! (she did that last night too, so the bone has since been removed from our room)

 Needless to say, the next morning she was POOPED! She was definitely spoiled on her birthday!

Superbowl Sunday

Happy Sunday! I was shocked to wake up to the sun beaming through my window... I almost forgot what it looked like! Since I last posted, I completed week 2 of the Couch to 5K program! I went to the gym Thursday night and Sunday, and I feel great! I think I will start week 3 tomorrow morning before work.


Yesterday I had a cheat day - Walter and I went to the International Great Beer Expo in Secaucus with some friends. Despite the weather, we had a great time! We tried many types of beer, but my eating wasn't the best :(


My eats have been pretty standard since I last posted on Thursday:


THURSDAY
L - Chili over salad
D - Salad topped with a black bean morning star burger, tomato, avocado, hot sauce, and ranch


FRIDAY
B - Yogurt w/granola and pear

L - Grilled chicken sandwich on ww bread with roasted peppers, lettuce, and basil mayo (whoops!) with soy crisps
D - One (!) slice of pizza


SATURDAY
B - A monster orange and breakfast sandwich: ww english muffin, an egg, roasted peppers, lettuce, balsamic, laughing cow cheese wedge. (recipe to follow)
S - Handful of Puffins Cereal, 1/2 granola bar
L - soft pretzel, 2 bites of Walter's cheese steak
D - tons of beer, a chicken finger, some disco fries, spinach artichoke dip


SUNDAY
B - English muffin w/apple butter
L - 1/2 Qudoba burrito bowl with rice, black beans, peppers, onions, pulled pork, mild salsa, guac.

AMAZING BREAKFAST SANDWICHES
I wanted to go through the "step by step" and ingredients in my breakfast sandwiches I have been raving about lately. For this one, I changed it up a bit, which made me realize the ingredients to my favorite sandwich!

For bread, I use these Thomas light multi grain english muffins. I take one and throw it in the toaster...

They only have 100 calories each and are really good!

Then I spray a small pan with Pam, and cook an egg over easy. I actually poke a few holes in the yolk and then flip the egg, because I don't like a runny yolk. If you do (Walter), you don't have to flip the egg.

Here are my toppings for this sandwich. Lettuce, roasted peppers, a laughing cow cheese wedge, and later - balsamic vinaigrette dressing.

 Once everything is done, assemble, and EAT!

 My favorite breakfast sandwich by FAR includes the following:

• English muffin
• Over easy egg
• Laughing cow cheese wedge
• Tomato
• Avocado
• Cilantro
• Hot sauce

These sandwiches are easy to make, and taste great! The sandwich I made above had 300 calories including the orange on the side. I think these are a perfect weekend breakfast, because they break up the oatmeals and yogurts of my life, and i look forward to eating them all week! 

After breakfast, Molly and I played for awhile. She tried hiding from me, but i found her...

 There she is!

 Here she is chewing her favorite red ball:

 And posing with it. Doesn't it look like she has a mustache?!

I actually had to throw that ball away, because she started tearing little pieces of plastic off and eating it. I now owe her a new favorite ball. Happy Super Bowl watching!

Santacon!

Merry Christmas Eve! In honor of the holiday, I figured I would FINALLY explain my first cheat day/weekend... Santacon!

Santacon is a Santa themed pub crawl, where people dress as Santas, Mrs. Claus, and other holiday themed characters, and bar hop the day away. It happens in cities all over the world! So on Saturday, Dec 18th, Walter, myself, and some friends headed to Morristown to join in the fun! Here are a few photos of the madness:

In other news, last weekend Molly also got groomed for Christmas and New Years! After she was done we picked out her very own tacky Christmas sweater for the occasion:

She is too much!

Rainbow Cookies

I guess I have been really busy this Christmas season, and it is affecting how often I am posting! Hopefully it will get a little less hectic soon J Ok, so let’s pick up from where we left off.

Monday’s lunch - Progresso can of split pea soup, 2 saltines, and a slice of whole wheat bread.

Snack – handful of trail mix

Dinner – Walter’s work Christmas party! I had one large plate, and filled it with half salad, grilled peppers and mushrooms, and caprese salad. The other half was filled with 3-4 mussels, penne vodka and pasta with alfredo sauce. I skipped the bread basket (yay!) but had half a slice of amazing chocolate cake and a bite of Walter’s tiramisu (boo). I also felt like I drank an entire bottle of red wine myself! I am not the best at small talk, so I sipped on my wine glass most of the night. The second it got low, a waiter came over and filled it up to the brim it seemed like!

Tuesday I woke up nauseous (surprise surprise) because of the odd combo of foods and wine I had (I think it was the alfredo pasta and wine personally).

Breakfast – oatmeal plain (one splenda) and a Clementine. Someone left a bag of them in the kitchen at work for people to take. Score!

Snack – A RAINBOW COOKIE!

Lunch – I went to shoprite and got vegetable noodle soup from their soup bar. It LOOKED like it would be like chicken noodle without the chicken, but no such luck. Too many weird veggies. I ate it anyway and had a ton of pretzel goldfish on the side!

Snack 2 – ANOTHER RAINBOW COOKIE!!! If there is any dessert I would cheat on my diet for (other than choc. Cake), it would be rainbow cookies. They are my all time FAVORITE!!!

Dinner – Soup and Salad. Walter’s sister Christina arrived for the holidays, and she loves to cook. She whipped up an awesome soup filled fresh veggies, lentils, and small pasta straight from her recent trip to Italy! I will try and remember to snap a pic later. I had a small cup of soup, and a huge salad filled with mixed greens, chicken, craisins and feta. I made another one for lunch today!

Dessert  – A Clementine. I was busy working on my homemade gift for Christmas (a painting), and worked up an appetite.

I have said it before and I will say it again… Molly is NOT a morning person. As Walter and I were getting ready she kept sleeping…

And when she caught me snapping a picture of her she protested!

Today was bagel day at work! We get them once a month for birthdays, so I couldn’t skip. Especially when I discovered WHEAT EVERYTHING bagels in the mix! If you ask me, it is the perfect bagel.

I am learning more and more during this dieting thing that preparation is KEY to success. Knowing it was bagel day, I packed 2 triangles of Laughing Cow light Garlic & Herb cheeses. I think they taste SO good, and I used it instead of cream cheese.

 I ended up taking out all of the insides of the bagel, putting a dab of green olive cream cheese (because how could I now) on part, and used one of the triangles on the rest.

 I saved the other triangle and ¼ of my bagel for lunch!

Have a great day!

Oatmeal...the Saga Continues

Every day this week I have had oatmeal for breakfast, and every day it seems to be a new experience. That's a good thing, because I am not getting bored with it. Earlier this week, I compared my weight control maple and brown sugar (on the left) with the plain stuff (on the right). And I was very surprised...

 

The weight control only has 20 more calories, 0.5 more grams of fat, 3 more carbs, and 2 more grams of protein (!). But quickly i noticed where the plain oatmeal has the edge. It has 0 sodium and sugars compared to the 290 sodium and 1 sugars of the "good" oatmeal. Now does the 2 splendas I add to the plain oatmeal make it a more even match? :)


On Wednesday I made oatmeal and t came out like cereal. It was very mushy and watery. Kind of gross. I added craisins (a BIG fan), and bananas (not so much) to the oatmeal. 

And today... well it came out hard as a rock.

OK, it wasn' a ROCK, I still enjoyed it, but as you can see i was able to hold it sideways AND upside down without it budging! I added craisins and walnuts and it was very good! I think tomorrow I am going to strive for a happy medium between the two. :)

So for breakfast I had the oatmeal above and a coffee. 

Snack - whole wheat pretzels

Lunch - Salad with grilled chicken, roasted peppers, olives, prosciutto, mozzarella, and balsamic vinaigrette. So good!

Snack - coffee and soy crisps

I think dinner will be a salad with quinoa and other goodies, but since it's FREEZING out, who knows.

In other news, Molly is going to get to see her best friend tomorrow morning and ALL weekend! Barkley is coming to town!